First off, I’ll freely admit that the ele rework launched severely overtuned this week. But the nerfs coming on Tuesday are way beyond what was necessary to bring the spec in line with other DPS.
The numbers are still being nailed down, but the nerfs are poised to make ele into the worst DPS spec in the game. If our stat priority ends up changing again, it will cost us thousands of gold on top of what we already spent to change them this week, during the most expensive season in recent memory. The builds that we have spent the past few days discussing and greatly enjoying will be killed, and something less fun and engaging will probably take their place.
Why is it always like this? Why were we allowed, for one week, to experience the kind of power that certain other blue-colored classes get to enjoy for entire seasons, only to be thrown back into the dirt? What kind of Charlie Brown football BS is this?
On the part of the developers, this looks like a complete lack of understanding when it comes to Elemental at best, and malice at worst. It certainly feels like a cruel trick has been played on the Elemental community. Unless these changes are adjusted to be more reasonable, any good will the devs have accumulated among ele shamans will be just as lost as our raid spot.
110 Likes
It would be outright preferable to not have a rework at all then to get what we’ve seen in a week.
46 Likes
I think the terrible tuning/QA this season is sign of a bigger problem at Blizzard. They touted hero talents as the marque feature of TWW. However, by doing this, they essentially quadrupled the tuning and QA needed to have a balanced game. While I sympathize with the effort Blizzard is putting in to keep the game balanced, it seems like they did not properly hire enough developers ahead of the expansion to keep the game in a healthy state.
In terms of ele, I actually appreciate the 11.0.5 playstyle and am super happy with the changes from a gameplay standpoint. I think some nerfs were definitely warranted. BUT whats the point of making all these changes to put the spec in a worse state then 11.0.2 when it was already completely fine?
A lot of players also spent gold rerolling their items and its pretty ridiculous we’ll most likely have to do it again due to gross negligence from Blizzard’s side,
23 Likes
don’t forget catalyst on the mythic gear we finally got because herpa derpa it’s full mastery time. came back for fun and feels like i picked up a new job.
19 Likes
There were two main reasons my wife quit the game. And Blizzard making abrupt changes with no regard for the players time and effort was one of them.
She dished out thousands and thousands of gold to complete a quest (she was going for Lore Master) and Blizzard kept changing the quest, she made a ticket and the GM told her sorry for her inconvenience but they were not refunding her gold, since it was a world drop AH only item.
Also, when they changed Shaman from Crit to Mastery, she had just competed her raid BIS set and then they changed Ele shaman from Crit to Mastery. The guild rules were you could not roll on gear unless it was 10 ilvl higher than what you already had. So she couldn’t get re-geared. So back stabbers that wanted her raid spot talked behind her back about how bad her logs were (she went from Purple and Yellows to green and blues), so she lost her raid spot. That was the last time she played the game.
13 Likes
200k Gold, two catalyst charges, all new spec mid season, viable/invited to keys, and now we’ll be worse than before the patch and have to restat/regear all over again potentially? Meta classes are already back up to close overall or winning and 3 packs can already be less then tank damage unless proc. How is this real life? Can’t we just get to be not bad? I was excited for the shakeup, but this is abuse.
36 Likes
The rework made multiple builds unviable, gave us an ever so slightly harder rotation, and left us with ascendance as our core pillar. Now they are nerfing that core and surprise surprise the roof is collapsing. They needed to buff other pillars to nerf it and didn’t.
I’ll be honest and say I never saw the appeal of the 11.0.5 rework. Icefury is meh. Overloads could have been cool to build around in the main rotation but without ascendance there wasn’t enough there to build around. The new flame shock talent just left me flabbergasted since we already have so many flame shock based talents and that gameplay isn’t exactly fun especially without magma totem. Everything was placed in the ascendance basket, which is already gameplay I hate, and now because of that everything is getting nerf so even not taking ascendance means you’re nerfed into the ground.
Essentially the rework is now worse than nothing, we are worse than if we had no rework. That is a true metric of absolute failure.
25 Likes
Buffing frost shock and lightning bolt?
It appears they know nothing of pvp. Hard casting lightning bolt is deathin pvp especially to melee who, well, they buffed warriors so that will add to the issue.
Frost shock is only used to buff lava burst so it appears they wanted to tranfer some of the damage. This thought process is a falacy with frost shock being on the GCD.
So maybe they want all to spec out of ascendance now? I mean right now stormbringer is even worse with only 1 isntant cast Lightning bolt. Not like storm bringer was uised often due to the cast time and limited damage.
It would be beneficial to just not take that talent (Stormbringer) at all.
Oh, and we see the stealth nerfs to other classes as well that you did not document as well.
9 Likes
I finally found a Farseer build I’m really liking for M+
Very pleased that I’m not feeling forced to swap specs.
4 Likes
The elemental shaman dev needs to be fired. This flip flopping MID SEASON is total bs. You can’t repeatedly change a spec’s itemization and expect players to be happy. This reword should have never happened mid season and honestly they should just revert it and try again for season 2.
28 Likes
yup we get nurfed here yet pallies which have prob the easiest rotation ever are not getting touched and still out perform most classes even with that extremely easy rotation.
10 Likes
You have short memory. In DF S2 mid season they release Aug evoker which ruin the season completely
2 Likes
That’s introducing a new spec, not revamping an existing one.
4 Likes
By having a new spec mid season they completely change the meta when people are trying to lock in their 0.01% title and force to change spec just like what’s happening with ele shammy.
3 Likes
Frost mages are a bit more durable and can easily burst people down. No big nerfs there. Very odd. Hunters still hurt and we do not see the gutting at that level either. idk
I would like to play mine more but I will stay with a class they continue to buff.
5 Likes
I have a revolutionary idea to stop the immense tuning they done after patch launches. Instead of just guessing then figuring it out properly later why don’t we have some sort of special server where all the numbers can tested by the public to make sure there are no major issues before actually launching the new content into the main game. I can’t believe no one has thought of this before, it would smooth out so many problems. Someone call Blizzard to tell them, I will give this idea away for free.
10 Likes
That sounds like a third problem: a horrendous guild.
I hate how they’re trying to force frost shocks. Just let that be a pvp thing and have the pve rotation stop at icefury. At least icefury is instant and has synergy now compared to the DF iteration, but I really dont want Frost Shock the be the optimal button to press in any situation except moving.
6 Likes
Agreed.
PVE has no reason to even use frost shock so it is very insincere on their part to even offer an ability a buff when it will never be used.
Doesn’t appear there is any clear thought on what to do on their part.
What is clear, is that there is no real plan. Obviously the tuning of this spec has been reactionary since launch.
Why this is (reactionary) can be many issues from staff shortages, unrealistic deadlines, work overload.
It all starts at the top, so whoever is guiding this team has some very real challenges in leading them.
Root cause.
5 Likes
The heroic group B grp leadership was terrible, the Mythic raiders were an Amazing group of guys. But you have to say if that was allowed to go on and the officers didn’t squash it then it’s still bad management.
I never want to be in another guild like that one, they would go over your logs every week point out if you didn’t meet expectations. Still it was a pretty crap thing for Blizzard to do as that is pretty standard way of doing loot in a guild.
The guild before that would bring anyone and anyone had a chance to roll. So every few weeks they would bring in a new "blue geared’ fellow and us veterans would be rolling against them. That did not happen in the other guild, but their standards were very high and stressful. But it’s not fair to let one person keep re-rolling on gear, that is blizzards fault IMO.